Undeterred by injury, Kerry forges ahead with Iran talks

Unhindered by a leg injury, US Secretary of State John Kerry said he was determined to press ahead with the diplomatic effort to reach a nuclear agreement with Iran, in comments published Sunday.

Speaking to the Boston Globe in his first interview since a bike accident in France put him in the hospital two weeks ago, the American diplomat heading the negotiations with Tehran said he’d been working nonstop from his bed at Massachusetts General Hospital while his femur mends.

“We’re working on an unbelievable number of things,” he told the paper. “We have a lot going on. A lot going on.”

Kerry spoke through secure lines with US President Barack Obama and the negotiating team in Vienna, where world powers and Iran are trying to hash out a deal by the June 30 deadline.

He also called foreign diplomats and exchanged emails with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, the paper reported.

“You know, some things have gotten hard. Some things are progressing,” Kerry said about the Iran talks. “It’s hard. It’s a hard negotiation. We haven’t talked to each other in 35 years. There’s huge suspicion. And huge stakes.”

“Could we get an agreement? For sure,” he added. “Could it fail? Yes.” He said he was “hopeful,” but not optimistic, about reaching a deal by June’s end.

Kerry was sidelined when he crashed his bike in late May while riding during a break in nuclear talks near the French-Swiss border. He broke his femur and was flown back to the US for treatment, but officials have insisted he would not let the injury keep him from working.

After striking an interim agreement in April, the US and world powers agreed to a June 30 deadline to reach a final deal. Iranian negotiators and those of the P5+1 group (Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States) are meeting this week in Vienna to clinch a deal that would guarantee the strictly peaceful nature of Tehran’s nuclear program in exchange for a lifting of the punishing international sanctions.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said the talks were “so far a great victory for the Iranian nation.” The major powers have recognized Iran’s right to possess a uranium enrichment program and the enrichment sites in Natanz and Fordo will remain open, he said.

Iran has rejected inspection of its military facilities, which the US and European powers demand as part of the oversight measures to ensure Iran doesn’t produce weapons-grade fissile material.

Kerry said Iran was “looking to put an angle on some of those things that was not, in our judgment, understood or part of the deal.”

Alluding to the talks’ March deadline going overtime, Kerry said that the June 30 mark could go over by days but not weeks.

“If you don’t get this done on the schedule, then mischief-makers step in everywhere,” Kerry said. “You have plenty of folks in Iran who would love to not see the deal, hard-liners. . . . You have people here in the United States who don’t want the deal.”

Kerry rebuffed critics of an emerging deal, saying, “I can’t think of a time in history where America’s leadership has been more critical to as many different issues simultaneously as right now.”